Lieksa forms partnership with Deqing

The co-operation and sister city agreement was signed last week in the roughly 650 000-resident Deqing, which is located some 200 kilometres south-west of Shanghai.

“The agreement will be of great importance for the City of Lieksa, and our mutual objective is to launch concrete co-operation from the very early stages,” Jarkko Määttänen, the Mayor of Lieksa, tells in a press release.

“Our co-operation was also covered widely in the local media,” he adds.

The first steps of the partnership in the fields of education and early-childhood education will be to design programmes related to teaching methods and special education content for events to be organised in Lieksa.

“We have already put together a few-day educational programme related to the theme of nature, and hopefully the first group will visit Lieksa as soon as this summer,” says Määttänen.

Lieksa and Deqing will also seek to establish a channel for pupil and student exchange and, ultimately, expand the partnership to also encompass upper secondary and higher education contents.

They have also begun exploring the possibility of collaborating in the tourism industry.

“The basis for our joint efforts to promote tourism are formed by the prominent destinations in Deqing, such as Mount Mogan, which is the Chinese equivalent to our Koli [the highest fell in North Karelia],” says Määttänen.

The partnership was brokered by Future Missions, a not-for-profit development company based in Joensuu, Eastern Finland.